Wealthy Man Takes His Life By Fire

January 11, 1986|By Marci Richardson, Staff Writer

POMPANO BEACH — Family and friends say they didn`t really understand the man they described as a millionaire philanthropist, much less why he would drive his car to a deserted parking lot Friday morning, douse the front seat and his body with gasoline and put a match to himself.

Charles H. Parker, 63, was discovered by police about 7 a.m., his body burned beyond recogition, but sitting erect behind the steering wheel of his 1983 Mercury station wagon as it sat parked at First Bankers, 2400 E. Atlantic Blvd., said police Lt. David Cassell.

Parker was dead when firefighters arrived, but the car was still burning, authorities reported.

``We took several cans, a gallon can and several one-pint plastic containers, out of the front seat where he was,`` said David Seyse, spokesman for the Pompano Beach Fire Rescue Department. ``He was definitely dead when we got there. He did it real quick. He had enough flammable liquid in there that he went real fast.

``He didn`t suffer much.``

That thought was somewhat of a comfort to Parker`s sister, Elizabeth Adamo. As she stood outside Parker`s condo at the Island Club of Pompano Beach, Adamo was careful not to let passersby see the customary state of disarray inside. Her brother had been a good cook but a poor housekeeper, she said.

Why did he kill himself, Adamo asked herself, and why had he chosen such a method? She didn`t know, and her brother had not left a clue. Only one note was found. The memo asked that whoever found it get in touch with Adamo`s husband, Vincent.

``He left no reason, nothing. It would make it easier if he had,`` Adamo said. The Adamos had come from Spring Lake, N.J., to their winter home in Boynton Beach last week. Adamo said she had spoken with her brother for an hour over the telephone the day before his death. She said he had told her that he didn`t like driving on Interstate 95 any more and that he couldn`t believe how Florida had grown in the 20 years he had lived here. Then they chatted about their childhood in Staten Island, N.Y., and their late mother.

``Charlie was the type of person who didn`t like to talk about people after they died. It made him sad,`` Adamo said. ``I`m a reminiscer. But I guess -- because he was a sea captain -- he wasn`t.``

The high school-educated Parker had made his way up the ranks, working on a tugboat in New York Harbor at age 19 to early retirement after a long career as a freighter captain for Exxon Oil Co. out of Houston.

His wife had been a successful real estate broker, amassing several land holdings around Florida before her death in 1978. She was cremated and her ashes scattered at sea. Her birthday would have been this month. January also was the month the couple was married. It would have been their 28th anniversary.

``This month was her anniversary and her birthday. Isn`t it peculiar how some people can be strong and other people can`t handle it,`` Adamo said.

Friends and neighbors said Parker weighed well over 300 pounds, probably 350, and stood about 5 feet 9. He had lost about 70 pounds over the last year and a half, and was being treated at Imperial Point Medical Center, said a neighbor, Robert Christoph, probably the last person to see Parker alive.

Parker moved to Pompano Beach from Boca Raton four years after his wife`s death. He began making investments, buying two condos at the Island Club and five units at the Laver International Tennis Resort in Delray Beach, said Blair Anderson, Parker`s insurance agent and a fellow member of the Boca Raton Lions Club.

Anderson said Parker owned three cars: the station wagon he died in; a Jeep only two months old; and a $26,000 Lincoln Continental, which Anderson referred to as Parker`s ``pride and joy.``

Anderson, an acquaintance of Parker`s for five years, said he knew the man about as well as anyone. He described him as a bit brash, big-hearted, a man with tremendous mood swings, very jolly or very down.

But he also said Parker was a man who gave lots of money and time to the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine and donated blood and money to blood banks. He was active in Crime Watch programs as well, Anderson said.